Starling Fitness: Daily writings on Fitness, Diet, and Health

Scott Adams is the artist responsible for Dilbert. He also regularly writes a blog. This entry talks about a massage he received from a very large woman in Reno.

• The Dilbert Blog: Petting the Cat

Before explaining his uncomfortable massage, he explained that he wasn’t making fun of the woman because she was fat.

Let me be clear that I do not approve of making fun of overweight people. Those that mock the hefty are delusional because they believe in the superstition of will power. They believe that some people have a lot of this non-existent will-power substance whereas overweight people have less of it.

I believe that will power is an illusion. Overweight people simply get more enjoyment from food than thin people do, at least relative to their other pleasure options. If I liked food more than I like playing tennis, I’d be the size of a house. Will power never enters into it.

Some people are larger than others. Deal with it.

He has a point. It seems that people who are offended by overweight people tend to believe that being overweight is some sort of moral failing. Then again, the human body has such a wide variation that some people are just physically larger than others. We just need to accept this.

Being fat is NOT a moral issue. It might not even be an aesthetic issue. Being fat just is. It’s not bad and it’s not good. It’s just a fact.

Being fat isn’t set in stone either. The beauty of our bodies is that we can sculpt them. We can change the shape. We can test our bodies with diets and exercise and observe the results. Each of us is a beautiful science experiment.